Friday, March 14, 2008

Karma, destiny and parallel universes

Credit: At the outset, let me thank a friend. With whom I chat regularly. Twice a day. Because the basic idea of 'what in the future' was given to me by that friend.

As the clock ticks away, the sun rises. The birds fly from their nests. People die. Little sprouts of leaves erupt from the soil.

The clock continues to tick.

What controls them all? What decides why things happen the way they do?

Karma - as you sow, so shall you reap, they say. Do the actions of the past decide the events of the future? Is the Newton's action-reaction proposition applicable here? Is it that something bad happens to me because I did bad to someone some day?

Or is it destiny - the 'written' future. Is the track of our lives defined when we are born? Or even before that? And the big question - who writes it?

Or is it about the parallel universes? Universes that combine and recombine? Multiple Aaditya Joshis who've gone different ways - who've joined different colleges, who've taken up different jobs - and I am just one version of them.

Why is the future hidden? Or is it hidden at all? Who decides the forward journey of an individual? Not just the individual, but the species - the plants, the animals, the mountains, the sun. Altogether. Is it a central authoritative entity called God who writes destiny for them all? Or is time just moving ahead in terms of parallel universes?

The answer to most of my questions here is simple. The answer lies in the ignorance of the human race.

The human race on the whole, like many of its individuals, thinks it rules the world and likes to believe that it is very smart. They are in fact quite the opposite.

In the pursuit of happiness in the external world, the humans have hardly paid any attention to the inner world. That controls them actually.